Man trapped for 17 hours with broken leg says he never lost faith he would be rescued
Official says searches for possible survivors could last for two more weeks
Mexico CityCNN
—
Hiram Navarro had reasons for hope and despair Friday as rescuers hunted for his brother and dozens of others who were feared to be in a Mexico City office building that collapsed in this week’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake.
The good news, rescuers told Navarro and other relatives of the missing: Heat-sensing equipment indicates people may be alive in pockets of space amid the rubble of what had been a seven-story building.
The bad: Searchers have to move slowly and delicately, because the wreckage is unstable and could collapse further.
Relatives estimate up to 50 people were in the building along Avenida Alvaro Obregon in west-central Mexico City when the quake hit Tuesday. Family members have waited nearby ever since – some of them staying overnight in tents – monitoring the search and hoping for the best.
Similar scenes have been playing out across central Mexico as volunteers joined trained search and rescue workers to try to reach possible survivors and clear rubble, days after the quake that officials say killed more than 300 people.
Navarro, who believes his brother, Jesus, was in the building at Avenida Alvaro Obregon, said rescuers told relatives that they haven’t made contact with anyone inside, and they’re approaching the site cautiously.
“If we make one wrong move, the (pockets of space where people might be) will collapse,” Navarro said, citing what rescuers told him.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Relatives of missing people wait for news in front of a collapsed building in Mexico City on Friday, September 22. A magnitude 7.1 quake hit central Mexico three days earlier.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Natacha Pisarenko/AP
Rescue workers search for survivors Thursday, September 21, at a collapsed apartment building in Mexico City.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Eduardo Verdugo/AP
A religious statue is salvaged from a former convent that was heavily damaged in Tlayacapan, Mexico. This was the second earthquake to hit Mexico in two weeks. A magnitude 8.1 quake struck off the country's southern coast on September 8.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Eduardo Verdugo/AP
A wall is damaged at a home in Tlayacapan on Wednesday, September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Volunteers organize donations in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Marco Ugarte/AP
Rescuers in Mexico City work to save a child trapped inside the Enrique Rebsamen elementary school on September 20. Rescue workers said they believed they'd made contact with a girl trapped in the rubble at the school. But by the next afternoon, navy official Angel Enrique Sarmiento said all the school's children had been accounted for and there was no student in the rubble. He apologized for the confusion.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Men carry beams of wood to offer help in Mexico City's Roma neighborhood on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Rebecca Blackwell/AP
Families prepare to sleep under tarps outside their quake-damaged building in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Rescuers and firefighters lower a corpse from a house in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Miguel Tovar/AP
Volunteers and rescue workers search for people trapped inside the Enrique Rebsamen school on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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A volunteer in Mexico City asks for silence as a flattened building is searched for survivors on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Members of the Mexican Army nap September 20 after assisting in search-and-rescue missions in Mexico City.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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People look for survivors in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Eduardo Verdugo/AP
A man walks his bike past a partially collapsed building in Jojutla on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Volunteers arrange food and other donated supplies at a distribution point in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Children's toys are seen in a damaged building in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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A survivor is pulled out of rubble in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Eduardo Verdugo/AP
People sleep on the street next to damaged homes in Jojutla on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Soldiers remove debris from a collapsed building in Mexico City on September 20.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Miguel Tovar/AP
An injured person is carried away after being rescued in Mexico City on Tuesday, September 19. The earthquake happened on the anniversary of a 1985 quake that killed an estimated 9,500 people in and around Mexico City.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Rescue workers remove rubble from a Mexico City building on September 19.
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Carlos Cisneros/AP
Rescue workers in Mexico City search for people trapped inside the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Rebecca Blackwell/AP
A man comforts a student outside a school in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images
A police officer runs toward the site where a building collapsed in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Eduardo Verdugo/AP
Rescue workers and volunteers search a collapsed building in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Pablo Ramos/AP
A man is rescued under rubble in Mexico City's Condesa area on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Marco Ugarte/AP
A woman's crushed body hangs from a collapsed building in Mexico City on September 19.
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Recovery efforts take place at the collapse of a residential building in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Carlos Rodriguez/AP
The quake damaged the Jojutla Municipal Palace.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Miguel Tovar/AP
A search goes on at the scene of a collapsed building in Mexico City's Del Valle neighborhood on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Emergency workers remove debris as they search for survivors in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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People react in Mexico City just after the quake hit.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Rebecca Blackwell/AP
People gather on a Mexico City street after office buildings were evacuated because of the quake.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Rebecca Blackwell/AP
A building is damaged in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Marco Ugarte/AP
A woman in Mexico City cries as she tries to reach people on her cell phone after the quake.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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Jose Mendez/EPA
Patients from a Mexico City hospital receive treatment outside after the hospital was evacuated on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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A woman in Mexico City reacts after the quake.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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People remove debris off a building that collapsed in Mexico City.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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A car is crushed by debris in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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A woman receives medical assistance after she was injured in Mexico City on September 19.
Photos: Deadly earthquake rocks central Mexico
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People stand inside a Mexico City building that collapsed in the quake.
17 hours in the rubble
Martin Mendez can laugh now. When the earthquake brought down the Mexico City building in which the locksmith was working, Mendez was trapped for 17 hours, overwhelmed by the pain of a broken bone and worried his life-sustaining air would run out. Three women tumbled around or on him. One woman fell with such force his right leg was broken.
Search and rescue efforts could last “for at least two more weeks,” Luis Felipe Puente, Mexico’s civil protection coordinator, told CNN affiliate Foro TV on Friday.
“Our first phase is rescue and humanitarian aid,” Puente said. “Until we are absolutely certain that there are no more people missing, we will continue our search and rescue mission.”
’We brought wheelbarrows, shovels, mallets’
Many rescue operations continued through the weekend, including at a Mexico City elementary school where 25 people – including 19 children – had died. Mexican navy officials monitoring the operation walked back earlier reports that rescuers had made contact with a girl trapped alive at the school, but they haven’t ruled out that someone else could be found in the debris.
And on Sunday, according to the Mexican navy, the body of an adult woman was recovered from the rubble that had been the school.
Search teams from Israel, Japan and the United States joined the rescue efforts. They spent a lot of time removing debris from around the ventilation duct work.
Kara Fox/CNN
Scene outside a textile factory in Mexico City's Obrera neighborhood where at least 20 died in collapse.
Throughout the region, buses carried volunteers from Mexico and beyond to disaster sites, where they bolstered search-and-rescue efforts. People formed human chains to pass along supplies and remove chunks of lumber and concrete.
Volunteer Jorge Carreño left Mexico City for the small town of Jojutla, where some homes had collapsed. There, human chains spanning entire blocks worked Thursday, carrying buckets full of debris away from collapsed homes.
“We brought wheelbarrows, shovels, mallets. Everybody has hard hats, gloves and is ready to help,” Carreño told CNN.
Natalie Gallón/CNN
A building is in ruins in Jojutla, Mexico, after Tuesday's quake.
President Enrique Peña Nieto declared a national emergency, and the country is observing three days of national mourning. An unaccounted number of people are staying at shelters around the capital after losing their homes. Schools have closed indefinitely, and millions initially were without power.
In all, 154 deaths were reported in Mexico City, one of North America’s most populous metropolises with more than 21 million people. Elsewhere, 73 deaths were reported in Morelos state, 45 in Puebla state, 13 in the state of Mexico, six in Guerrero state and one in Oaxaca state.
CNN’s Rosa Flores reported from Mexico City, and Jason Hanna wrote from Atlanta. CNN’s Cassandra Santiago, Mariano Castillo, Ivan Watson, Flora Charner, Kara Fox, Elwyn Lopez and Nicole Chavez contributed to this report.
